Fourth Encounter With Nvidia’s G92 Is Approaching: GeForce GTS 250 Due in Days.

Nvidia Corp. is about to unveil its GeForce GTS 250, which is a re-branded version of the previously available products. But while performance levels of the novelty will not change, there will be some other adjustments: the new graphics card will not support triple-SLI technology and will feature shorter and more affordable print circuit board.

Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 is based on the aging G92b chip that was initially released back in late 2007 and which performance was similar to the G80 (GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS), launched in late 2006. The G92b graphics processing unit made using 55nm process technology features 128 stream processors, 32 texture units, 16 render back end units, 256-bit memory controller, hardware acceleration of video playback and post-processing, etc. Clock-speeds of the GeForce GTS 250 graphics solution are similar to those of the GeForce 9800 GTX+: 738MHz for the chip, 1836MHz for stream processors, 2200MHz for GDDR3 memory.

There are some differences between the graphics cards themselves: the GeForce GTS 250 comes with shorter print circuit board, which also costs less to make, and with only one MIO connector that points to lack of support for 3-way multi-GPU configurations. The absence of triple-SLI technology support will hardly be missed by many. Some Nvidia GeForce GTS-based graphics cards will feature 512MB of memory, copying the GeForce GTS 512MB and GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+ (which are all based on essentially the same GPU), but more advanced versions will come with 1GB frame-buffer to offer better performance with antialiasing enabled.

In fact, Nvidia bets heavily on the low price of the GeForce GTS 250: the 512MB version should cost $129 and 1GB version is projected to be available at manufacturer suggested retail price of $149, considerably lower compared to price-points of the 9800 GTX+ models.

Nvidia will formally introduce the fourth version of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 – the GeForce GTS 250 – on the 3rd of March and projects “wide retail availability on or before March 10th”.